Personal Competence
Part 1 of "Learning Environments"
Students with gifts and talents demonstrate growth in personal competence and dispositions for exceptional academic and creative productivity. These include self-awareness, self-advocacy, self-efficacy, confidence, motivation, resilience, independence, curiosity, and risk taking.
Reflect on the topics in the following slides, and consider how you can help students develop personal competencies in these topics.
Personal Competence
CHoose a Pathway to explore
Self-Awareness
Self-Awareness is knowing yourself in a honest and vulnerable way.
Gifted students often have a heightened sense of self-awareness and how they are different from their peers.
How can the learning environment help Foster
Self-Awareness In Students?
+ Consider activities that require students to do true and honest reflection.
+ Exercise Text-to-Self reflections
+ Giving each student their space to figure out what tools, techniques, methods work for them.
+ Offer a variety of resources - educational, for lifeskills, and for social-emotional learning.
+ Practice Meta-cognition - thinking about what we're thinking about
Self-Awareness
Self-Advocacy
Self-Advocacy is asking for what you need.
Gifted students often have needs that require self-advocacy. How a gifted student would like to learn and like to show their learning is often a topic that's hard to broach in the classroom.
How can the learning environment help Foster
Self-Advocacy In Students?
+ Give students a voice in classroom happenings.
+ Let students reflect on how class is going. Ask students their preferences
+ don't take classroom reflections personally.
+ Step back from being a go-between and encourage them to advocate for themselves (with support, if needed)
+ "Ask three and then me."
+ Teach appropriate times and situations to self-advocate
Self-Advocacy
Self-Efficacy
Self-Efficacy is one's perception of their impact on something and their potential success with something.
Gifted students often have high self-efficacy because they have seen what they have been able to achieve through their efforts.
How can the learning environment help Foster
Self-Efficacy In Students?
+ Allow students to reflect on how they think they did in a task or assignment, and compare that to their score / achievement.
+ Give students opportunities to reflect on their achievements and mistakes.
+ Specifically have students consider their strengths and weaknesses. What makes them think that? How can they improve?
Self-Efficacy
Confidence
Confidence is believing in oneself.
The level of confidence that a gifted student has could hinge on the task at hand and the knowledge they possess. Ideally, confidence wouldn't waiver when the student is faced with a challenge.
How can the learning environment help Foster
Confidence In Students?
+ Give students appropriately challenging work that they can be successful with independently
+ Celebrate incremental successes
+ Show students how their hard work pays off
+ give students warm-ups to topics and lessons that they can be highly successful in (before the challenges start)
+ Give timely and specific feedback
+ Reflect on successes as well as mistakes.
Confidence
Motivation
Motivation is the internal desire to work toward something.
The level of motivation in gifted students ranges. If they believe what they are doing is worthwhile and enriching to them, motivation is high. Decreasing motivation comes from repeated instances of what they believe is busywork or not enriching to them.
How can the learning environment help Foster
Motivation In Students?
+ Give students appropriately challenging and meaningful work.
+ Show students their progress and mastery in skills.
+ Allow students to explore ideas and skills that they would like to learn - check out Genius Hour.
+ Give students choice in their assignments - consider project menus, webquests, etc.
+ Give timely and specific feedback
+ Apply their learning to real-world situations
Motivation
Resilience
Resilience is the ability to quickly and easily recovering from difficult situations.
Resilience is an important factor in problem-solving. First solution didn't work? Try again. Sometimes "failure" is attached so deeply to identity that it is hard for students to move on and try again.
How can the learning environment help Foster
Resilience In Students?
+ Give students the opportunity to try something more than once.
+ Challenge students appropriately and celebrate incremental successes.
+ Have students reflect on times that they overcame mistakes and failures.
+ Check out the problem-solving process or engineering process - make this a part of every day language.
Resilience
Independence
Independence is one's ability to try something and to achieve something alone.
Gifted students are often given independent tasks from an early age. independence is tied to motivation, risk-taking, self-efficacy, etc. Can they be self-reliant?
How can the learning environment help Foster
Confidence In Students?
+ Give students the tools to check in with themselves independently - consider something like a work log.
+ Give students a doable task and give them 5 minutes to work on it alone before they ask questions or get help.
+Introduce students to the problem-solving process.
+ "AsK Three and then me."
+ Use questioning to redirect students: "Where could you look to find the answer?"
Independence
Curiosity
Curiosity it one's desire to learn more and to explore the world around them.
Gifted Students often have heightened curiosity, because they have felt the thrill of learning and gaining new skills. How can you make intellectual curiosity not only accepted - but encouraged - in your classroom?
How can the learning environment help Foster
Confidence In Students?
+ Create a space and time in which students can ask questions that might not be "on task", but are appropriate to the topic.
+ Have a bank of additional questions and topics related to your content that students can explore.
+ "What do you notice?" / "What do you wonder?"
+ Use student learning contracts for students to construct their own project / work.
Curiosity
(Academic)
Risk-Taking
Risk-Taking is one's ability to sacrifice something safe and reliable in order to gain something more.
Gifted students learn to value their success through grades and other outward measures of success. What if they took that challenge? What if they had to venture out and risk not being successful (immediately)?
How can the learning environment help Foster
Confidence In Students?
+ Students will be more likely to take risks when their efforts (even struggles) are celebrated, and not just the outcome.
+ Consider giving open-ended tasks that require a student's effort, but don't have one single Answer.
+ Foster confidence and self-efficacy and risk-taking will follow.
+ Show students your own academic risk-taking moments. make mistakes. learn something new.
(Academic)
Risk-Taking
